New slang is breaking out all the time—rather like new pimples on the face of a teenager!
And new slang is not always interesting.
In fact, for anyone who cares about language a great deal of new slang is boring—uninventive, trite and simplistic.
Those bits of new slang tend to have a short life—they get tossed around by the young (who don’t know any better) and then finally dribble down into the verbal gutter, die, and are flushed away.
However, sometimes a bit of new slang is intriguing—such as this one: ‘gruzz.’
There are quite a number of rhyming ‘-uzz’ words.
There are familiar ones such as ‘buzz’ and ‘fuzz’—and there are other, much less familiar words such as ‘huzz.’
That was once (from the 1500s) a rare synonym for ‘buzz’—another way of conveying that sound (but never a very common one), and it has now been revived (or, more likely, re-invented) in black American slang as the word for ‘house’ (as in ‘Hey bro, where’s your huzz?’)
Then there’s ‘bruzz’—this is (according to the Oxford) a ‘familiar form of address to a man.’
This appears to also be a bit of black American slang, and to be a variation on ‘brother.’
A common abbreviation of ‘brothers’ is ‘bros’ and ‘bruzz’ is probably a deliberate corruption of that word.
But there is also this new one— ‘gruzz.’
According to the great American dictionary the Merriam-Webster: ‘Gruzz refers to old/older people.’
They go on to say that the word ‘gruzz’ is often preceded by the definite article ‘the.’
In other words, those of us of a certain age (and wisdom!) are labelled ‘the gruzz.’
I’m not sure I really mind this.
There are lots of other (more offensive) labels that have been used in the past (such ‘wrinklies’) so ‘gruzz’ is not too bad.
It’s not clear where it comes from.
Is it from the first two letters of ‘grey’ with the addition of the ‘-uzz’ suffix?
Possibly. Or from start of the words ‘grisly’ or ‘grumpy’?
(Well, we have been known to be grisly and grumpy on occasions!)
At any rate I think I am prepared to welcome this new bit of slang (for as long as it survives) and happy to be one of ‘the gruzz.’
Tonight, I'll join Steve Price (filling in for Peta Credlin) on the 'Credlin' show on Sky News for 'Words Matter.'
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